Yes, absolutely. Commercial software represents about 1% of our economy, even under the current copyright regime which artificially tilts the market in favor of the software sector. It's absolutely, criminally insane from a policy perspective to hold the other 99% of our economy hostage to this special interest. Lifting the artificial technological restrictions imposed by copyright would grow our economy by much more than 1%, every single year.

To take just one example, if not for copyright restrictions, Google Books would provably be willing to make available for free to every human on the planet the entire contents of the Library of Congress. You're telling me that the future potential growth from making this knowledge available isn't worth trading 1% of our economy on a one-time basis?

THIS.

Restrictions on computing or copying are unacceptable. Full stop. This is not negotiable. Copying is as natural as breathing in the digital age. Everything else, without exception, has to start from this premise and work around it. Nothing else is compatible with technological progress. Nothing else is compatible with free society.

If artists cannot sustainably produce music under this constraint, then so be it. Better to have no music at all than no freedom of computing.

If you invoke GPLv3 for your copy of the code, then you can stop other people from using your copy under LGPLv2. If you made modifications to your copy, then GPLv3 applies to your modifications. Of course, other copies of the code are licensed independently of your copy. I never claimed otherwise.

If you like the GPLv3 so much, no problem. Any copy of LGPLv2 software can be converted to GPLv3 at will. The text of the LGPL itself states:

If what you produce on your computer has the same value to society as the AC's excrement, then maybe you *should* consider stopping using it...

Free tools are an absolute must. No matter what you think of Microsoft, or how much you like their products, nothing beats open source for learning. I mean, this is almost a tautology: to learn about computers, programming, or anything related, you're far, far better off learning from something where you have access to source code.

The free tools have more rough edges than the Microsoft software you're used to. For learning purposes, this is an advantage. By the time you master sendmail configuration or mod_rewrite rules, you'll also have learned the m4 programming language and regular expressions. Clicking on graphical configuration wizards does not make you learn anything like what you naturally have to learn just to set up a Unix server.

Microsoft certainly makes some world-class software. Visual Studio is unmatched by anything in the open source world. But Visual Studio is not really that useful until you've actually learned how to code. Open source and free software will get you there.

The people behind Mt. Gox might kill him just to save their business from bankruptcy. It would nicely cover the bitcoins that they lost. There are many ways to make use of bitcoins without cashing them.

I agree, OS X is a unix, as much as Android is Linux. There are still some differences between the two; as pointed out in another reply, you can install Google Play Services on top of an AOSP-built Android, but there is no way to install the OS X UI on top of an open-source build of Darwin.

However, if you compare iOS and Android, which is the proper comparison, then there is one other major important difference: Lots of Android hardware is capable of running open-source Android builds, but there is no iOS hardware at all that can run open-source builds of Darwin. I don't consider iOS "open" if you can't run it on any actual hardware.

Herd immunity is what keeps your kids from being crippled by polio.

Vaccines are not 100% effective. Learn how they work, at least for your children's sake.

Also an assertive woman risks being called a "bitch", then women get blamed for not negotiating high enough salaries.

I'm afraid you've been wrong since 2nd grade then.

The mirror is actually misleading. Here's an alternative question:

Why, when you're facing another person, are your left and right reversed, but your up and down the same?

Bonus question: It's easy to describe what up and down are (down is closer to the Earth, up is further away). How would you describe left and right?

Google Voice support ends on May 15. You can't pay to continue using it; the XMPP service (which Obihai requires) is simply being discontinued. http://blog.obihai.com/2013/10...

Groups aren't interested in things, people are, and pre-adult female people get a lot of messages about what should interest them which are outright toxic and which we should compensate for. Getting them some exposure to CS and programming may partially make up for a lifetime that begins with their brothers hogging the computer and which continues with outright anti-intellectualism in school.

See the book "Unlocking the Clubhouse" for the results of hundreds of interviews with bright highly motivated female CS students.

> equal opportunity based upon relevant attributes (ie demonstrated interest and aptitude)

That's a good thing to focus on since we're not there yet and have more work to do.

I expect that the cost and scarcity of spectrum, not infrastructure hardware, will be the main driver of economic costs. It makes sense to leverage the most efficient technology even if the hardware costs are higher. Traditional voice service simply has to die. VoIP over LTE provides equivalent functionality. That means Skype, Google Hangouts, SIP, or whatever. I'm sure a company like Verizon can easily implement transparent VoIP over their own networks to emulate traditional phone service.